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Foreigners and Their Food

Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law
by David M. Freidenreich (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $34.95 / £30.00
Publication Date: Aug 2011
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780520950276
Endowments:
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About the Book

Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceptualize “us” and “them” through rules about the preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the “other.” Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative study of religion.

About the Author

David M. Freidenreich is the Pulver Family Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Notes on Style and Abbreviations

Part I. Introduction: Imagining Otherness
1. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
2. "A People Made Holy to the LORD": Meals, Meat, and the Nature of Israel's Holiness in the Hebrew Bible

Part II. Jewish Sources on Foreign Food Restrictions: Marking Otherness
3. "They Kept Themselves Apart in the Matter of Food": The Nature and Significance of Hellenistic Jewish Food Practices
4. "These Gentile Items Are Prohibited": The Foodstuffs of Foreigners in Early Rabbinic Literature
5. "How Nice Is This Bread!": Intersections of Talmudic Scholasticism and Foreign Food Restrictions

Part III. Christian Sources on Foreign Food Restrictions: Defining Otherness
6. "No Distinction between Jew and Greek": The Roles of Food in Defining the Christ-believing Community
7. "Be on Your Guard against Food Offered to Idols": Eidolothuton and Early Christian Identity
8. "How Could Their Food Not Be Impure?": Jewish Food and the Definition of Christianity

Part IV. Islamic Sources on Foreign Food Restrictions: Relativizing Otherness
9. "Eat the Permitted and Good Foods God Has Given You": Relativizing Communities in the Qur?an
10. "'Their Food' Means Their Meat": Sunni Discourse on Non-Muslim Acts of Animal Slaughter
11. "Only Monotheists May Be Entrusted with Slaughter": The Targets of Shi?i Foreign Food Restrictions

Part V. Comparative Case Studies: Engaging Otherness
12. "Jewish Food": The Implications of Medieval Islamic and Christian Debates about the Definition of Judaism
13. Christians "Adhere to God's Book," but Muslims "Judaize": Islamic and Christian Classifications of One Another
14. "Idolaters Who Do Not Engage in Idolatry": Rabbinic Discourse about Muslims, Christians, and Wine

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Reviews

“A very fine study. . . . Freidenreich’s book . . . is an important contribution that will prove valuable. . . . A fascinating and useful examination of texts.”
— H-Net Reviews
“His insights into how food helps define our identities is fascinating . . . It’s impossible to do justice to Freidenreich’s explanations in a short review. His work could easily serve as a textbook for a college course focusing on an examination of monotheistic dietary laws.”
— The Reporter Group
"[Freidenreich] coveys a meaningful message to all communitites that through dietary laws and restrictions we imagine ourselves and foreigners as others."
— Journal of American Academy of Religion
"The summary given [in my review] cannot capture the level of detail and nuance Freidenreich includes in this meticulously researched study... a creative, illuminating, and richly textured history."
— Speculum
“Written in lucid prose, Freidenreich displays a masterful command of a variety of sources and scholarship. He enviably manages an arduous task: to write an accessible book that is, at the same time, a major contribution to several academic disciplines.” —Jordan D. Rosenblum, author of Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism

“Can a Muslim eat meat from a Christian butcher? Can a Jew drink wine that has been handled by a Christian? Breaking through disciplinary, linguistic, and religious boundaries that often dominate scholarship, David Freidenreich offers a fascinating synthesis of these and countless other issues. This is a rich feast.” —John Tolan, author of Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter



Awards

  • Awards for Excellence 2012, American Academy of Religion